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The assumption all women are helpless puppies until they understandably snap back at the infantilaztion, then they're considered a "stupid b!tch" as a result.

Just take the W

It's a weird bug. Bluesky inserts it when you do voice-to-text.

A Win for you, apparently.

My solo travels w/o a male chaperone over the years: India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Germany, France, Spain, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Ecuador, NYC, inner city Los Angeles/Burbank, long roadtrips alone

“Walk in like you own the place” is real-life advice given by white men to (and exclusively for) other white men.

Truly it is a Mystery

The Dennys Plan

"Anytime I go to the bar, I keep noticing women covering their drink and staying in groups, I guess women are just super cautious all the time."

It's definitely the bears. 😉

Yes, and Doesn’t even need to be international or even interstate travel. A subway in the next county over is apparently very scary because of homeless folk(who are generally busy trying to nap in a place where the etiquette is to leave other people alone). So

I have to get the earliest train at 5 am to get to work. Years ago a guy passing out free newspapers decided it was okay to tell me that 'I shouldn't be out there alone,' and pointed out a woman and man 'there as a couple.' Umm, thanks? Creep. I still kind of wish I'd maced him.

The only time I can remember anything like this is when some people in South Africa tried to dissuade me from wandering around exploring places on my bike. Given that I was chased by people brandishing knives* just a while later, perhaps they had a point. * less dramatic than it sounds

I simply don’t think traveling alone is any more dangerous than doing activities alone. Simply consider safety of place. Most places Americans travel to are safer than U.S. Would you go to work alone or eat out alone in city you live in? Most places I wouldn’t travel to alone I wouldn’t go, period.

I remember having to inform many family members that it was a very normal and pretty delightful city. My only complaint was the lack of green spaces in the area I was staying. Not even like... Around the trees, which made it hard to stay there with my old arthritic dog who WILL NOT poop on concrete

not? Unsolicited advice is often unwelcome. But someone dying ruins everybodys day too. What I settled on was giving advice by saying how the situation felt to me like "that pitch scared the shit out of me". Then they can make their own decision and follow up or not as they see fit.

I’m a scuba diver and the culture is very similar.

Or that she’s courageous and adventurous!!

Of course your husband has to approve everything you do! He's your owner, after all! Pfffffft.

granted, i travel by myself 5-8 times a year (non-business) and people used to ask my wife the same. i think it’s helped save our marriage. my motto is “the family that vacations apart stays together”

I also travel for pleasure by myself pretty frequently and I've had people exclaim their surprise that my husband "let's" me do this. When I met my husband, I was 22 and traveling hundreds of miles solo on the regular to see Phish. If he wasn't ok with that, he married the wrong lady.

I also see this framing on crafting forums where women are tee-heeing about hiding their hobby purchases from their husbands for fuck’s sake, if you think you have to do that, you need both better budgeting and a new husband

WTAF?!

I regularly see Reddit threats where folks are horrified that spouses (men or women) would travel alone, though straight Reddit is obsessed with cheating.

Oh

Not unlikely. There werent that many women who did that.

Anyway when I got in her car when we met at the McDonalds I asked if her husband was as needlessly worried as mine was and made a joke about “I mean what are the odds there’d be TWO serial killers in this car” and you know people just do not appreciate how funny I am. 3/3

It’s a way to prepare for victim-blaming if something *does* happen

same reason sporting/competitive events get separated by gender. men NEED to believe there is no possibility a woman can be a serious challenge to men or their entire extremely fragile emotional lives disintegrate

It was probably risky for me to backpack in Europe alone. It’s also risky to get in a car to drive to work. So. I got a lot more out of the backpacking tbh.

I pointed out to him that she lives more in one week than most of us do in a lifetime - and also that it's not as scary a world as he's been led to believe (not that that moment wasn't quite intense even for her).

My baseline is that other people either know what they're doing or they don't. Either way, not my problem. If someone asks for help, I will give it - to a degree(emergency help? Yes. A list of the top 50 things they should see in my location? No). I have enough trouble piloting my own ass around.

They really do

my daughter running the Mesa Falls near Island Park, Idaho

Or if I had to pay for them.

I was doing hostel travel with other young women back in the days of Lonely Planet and phone calls, no internet research (in the way we have it now). We did our homework, stayed in a bunch of places, met some fun people, were perfectly fine. Same with mountain hut systems.

Also: shouldn’t be dangerous! /sigh

Ironically men also do assume risk when they’re traveling, they just are a lot more likely to be naive about it

That's true. I almost always travel alone because my husband is a homebody and not interested, but supports my wanting to go places. I don't go to spectacular places...

Interestingly, against all odds, I've travelled to 81 countries alone and I'm still here, of sound mind and body. I get that all the time from both men and women "What? You're travelling alone??" Really, no big deal, people, I'm not wrestling tigers in the octagon FFS

Shhh, best not give men any ideas... Ted Bundy said he chose his car, a VW Beetle, *specifically* because it made women trust him more when they saw what he was driving 😬

It’s worse at my age. I recently met my daughter’s future in-laws and their immediate family. They said to me that they’d heard from their son that I’d been to France on my own. It was a weekend! I just went on the ferry to Caen. I didn’t backpack around SE Asia. Or visit Trump’s America. 🤦‍♀️

And I mean London- I was there for work at the tail end of The Troubles and walked daily past the site of a truck bombing that’d killed two people a couple years before, and had my train stopped and had to get off because somebody fired an RPG at MI6 from the tracks a couple stops ahead

Women do nothing *but* calculate risk. Every jog, trip to the shops, date, relationship, where they park, what they wear...

They think things are risky *for us* but not for them. They also have no idea that we are taking calculated risks every day so it's normal for us: walking alone in a parking structure, walking down the street, certainly dating, taking an Uber, expressing opinions in work meetings, etc etc etc.

the bear isn't going to alpine divorce me, faine! (also if it tries murdering me i'm allowed to shoot it in the face; not that i know how to shoot, but you get my point)

Josh Johnson remarked that one woman commented "Well, at least if I were attacked by a bear, people would believe me". Wow. That says it all.

my brother is afraid (in that blustery fascist way that badly attempts to hide it) of the local train station because there's a lot of homeless ppl there; so that's how seriously i take certain guys' assessment of risk.

This isn't exactly what you're talking about but Idk. I have had a couple points where (with their permission) I've helped guide a woman I met somewhere because they were lost, maybe a little out of it, and not in the best area and didn't want someone else trying to take advantage or something.

I travel a lot alone in unusual places. NO one sucks more at risk assessment than comfortable white men who *think* they’re hard men. They’re the demographic who overwhelmingly get into the most stupid, easily avoidable dangerous incidents because they’re basically flightless island birds.

OMG some in my family freaked more when I went (alone) to Afghanistan to work for a NGO I was volunteering for than relatives going there to fight...I spoke with mostly male troops heading their way there about the culture, and they were floored I drove around in unarmored car with no armed guards.

Lmao people telling you to be careful in China? Statistically gotta be way way way safer than like Texas right?

Yes, the first half of the movie, “Apex,” makes this point - that men think women will trade the vague threat of being alone in nature for the very real threat of sharing space with predatory men. It made me so mad that I envisioned a Purge sequel where only the women are armed.

I grew up in the same place as Callie North. She is probably the coolest contestant on that show IMO. Just basically chilling the whole time lol

The best one of all is the cop that nopes out on night 1 in one of the first seasons.

Oh god, that show is such a petty-joy-watch for me. Because I would never claim to be a survivalist but I still have more than enough experience to know that, say, camping out under a tarp on a windswept beach in frozen temps is absolutely doomed. Absolutely baffling. The crushed egos are a delight.

I play a game called “The Long Dark” set in a post-apocalyptic Northern Canada in winter, and one of the (many) fascinating things about it is how radically the gameplay changes if/once you get your hands on a gun of any kind.

One of my favorite shows because most people are Fierce and they tap because they can't take the crushing loneliness. The people who do the best have total peace with themselves and don't mind being their own company

“There are bears! I didn’t sign up for bears!” You literally signed up for bears What you did not sign up for was feeling emotionally dysregulated and not being able to fix it with dominance cosplay (A high percentage of these guys are military or cops) 2/

I would not sign up for that show because the wilderness is full of things for me to trip over or that would make me break out in hives, but I don’t try to pretend I’d be good at it

I’m not frothing with rage, but I think that’s silly.

The same dudes will also take pride in setting up "rage bait" as they melt down over that meme.

dudes that’ll kill for their family but not do dishes or laundry You know, Dudes

Same energy bsky.app/profile/bull...

Brown people

Sorry, it is considered a walk in Ireland, in western Maine we call it a hike.

The riskiest thing that a woman can do may be going on an “adventure” or even just a hike with the man she’s married to or dating: bsky.app/profile/nell...

"Zodiac" strikes again, heh :)

The last time I needed something cut, I had my husband with me. Even though I kept answering all the questions, the guy kept directing them to my husband. Then he’d dramatically repeat it, like “gee, I don’t know, Care how wide do you need it?”

Honestly they might have been and sometimes I need that second nudge before I’m like “okay I have a hand saw but I don’t actually want to use that to cut these, please help me out”

I mean. I was kneeling on the floor. I was clearly looking for SOMETHING. I’d just found it already, was all. But my outfit did look more at home in the upstairs Fancy Housewares department.

Women fight in combat against men 🫡

Teenage boys assume the same thing about teenage girls—or they did in my day, anyway. “You’re walking ALONE? In THAT neighborhood?”

Most of the single expats here in Portugal are women. Women are fearless to move to a new country, men, not so much.

Those same people are then shocked and offended at women choosing the bear.

Related: stop fucking assuming that we don't know how to do shit. I've got this! I don't need your advice! And I sure as fuck don't need you to jump in and start doing it for me!

I walk the woods alone a lot and everyones scared of me meeting the local bears. I'm quite literally just fine. I know what animals sound like and I have the dog with me. I walked downtown Winnipeg alone at night. Worst that ever happened was that I walked into a cloud of weed smoke. The Horror 🙄

Like walking to her car in a garage at night.

I'm an anxiety case who expresses care by worrying and I DON'T FUCKING DO THIS TO PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW. Dudes! If I can do it, it's not hard! Yes, I also was raised with the "be useful" commandment but I modded it to "be (genuinely) useful" and that means SHUT IT UNLESS ASKED.

I’m not so sure it’s that they can’t imagine it as much as a subconscious (or conscious) belief that we don’t have the right to

No, I never noticed this, or thought that a woman alone was anything other than another person going about their day so for those reasons I cannot relate to your post.

I mostly mind my own business.

𝘜𝘨𝘩, 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘭𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘴𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘺𝘯-𝘬𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘲𝘶𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘪𝘧 𝘶𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘺? (I mean nothing by this other than a vaguely vampy shitpost, just people always talk about women like they're some sort of creature or object to study and not just literally fucking people!)

Meanwhile, men take stupid risks far more often. That's why they pay more for car insurance.

I’ve never thought that way.

(this is sarcasm)

I travel solo pretty routinely and plan every detail, down to street viewing my location so I know what I’m looking for. All of it is calculated.

Hoo boy, in all my years of rock climbing I have seen the biggest noobs try to do this to some of the strongest women more times than I can count